The Joyful Purpose of God

Over the past several years the Lord has been burdening the
pastoral staff more and more with the urgency of local evangelism.
Telling people about God and sin, Jesus and faith rises again and
again as a burning priority for Bethlehem.

The Urgency of Evangelism

No matter what part of your Christian commitment you focus on,
the Bible leads you from that focus to the urgency of evangelism.
For example:

If we focus on Christianity as a life of love, the
Bible shows us that love is hollow if we are willing to do nice
things for people but not tell them about how to escape hell and
gain everlasting joy with God (Luke 10:27).

Or if we focus on Christianity as obedience to the
commands of God, the Bible shows us quickly that God commanded us
to make disciples and to rescue the perishing (Matthew 28:19–10;
cf. James 1:22 with 5:20).

Or if we focus on Christianity as a life of joy and
fulfillment, the Bible makes clear that it is more blessed to give
than to receive (Acts 20:35) and that those we lead to Christ will
be our joy and hope and crown of exultation (1 Thessalonians
2:19).

Or if we focus on Christianity as the way of filling
the earth with the glory of God, the Bible shows us quickly that
God is glorified when we bear much fruit (John 15:8) and that
unbelief is the root of all that dishonors God (Romans 14:23).

Or if we focus on Christianity as a force for social
change and justice, the Bible shows us that apart from saving grace
the human heart and human society will sink deeper into sin and
immorality and decay (Romans 1:16–32).

Or if we think of Christianity as a demonstration of
kingdom power, the Bible shows us that the gospel is the power of
God unto salvation (Romans 1:16) and that the great demonstration
of kingdom power is when Satan's grip on unbelievers is broken
through the power of the Holy Spirit in saving faith (Mark 3:27;
Colossians 1:13).

In other words no matter what we focus on as the meaning and
purpose of Christianity, evangelism inevitably rises to the surface
with urgency. God has shown us more and more that there is no
authentic Christianity that doesn't have a sense of urgency about
evangelism. And Bethlehem will not be a faithful, obedient church
unless there is a longing and an effort among us to tell
unbelieving people around us about God and sin and Christ and
faith, in the hope that the Holy Spirit will use our words to bring
people to faith in Jesus and to everlasting salvation and joy.

One of Our Responses to This Urgency

One of our responses to this growing sense of urgency (not the
only one!) is the development of the pamphlet you have in your
hands called "Quest for Joy" and this series of messages based on
each of the points in that tract. We printed 5,000 of these and
they are available to you free if God leads you to use them in your
own efforts to tell people about the meaning of your faith.

Let me stress at the outset that making Christ known and winning
people to trust and follow him is an enterprise as varied as the
persons involved and as rich and deep as the truth of Jesus
himself. There are as many ways to make Christ known as there are
ways to describe his glory and obey his teaching.

We believe our job as leaders in the church is not to press
everybody into the same mold with regard to how you tell people
about Christ, but to inspire you to do it and to give biblical
foundations and to throw out possibilities for you to consider.
That's what we are up to in this pamphlet and in this series of
messages.

How did this come about? The book Desiring God is an attempt to
capture in writing the vision of God and Christian life that drives
and guides the leadership of this church. I don't know whether God
will use the book extensively in converting unbelievers. Dan
Chalmers did tell us at Missions in the Manse of a nominal Catholic
priest in Manila who was converted through studying the book.

But probably it assumes too much to be an effective book for
unbelievers. So people began to ask me the question: could we
develop a gospel tract that would be basic enough for unbelievers
and yet be rooted in the vision of God cherished at Bethlehem and
laid out in Desiring God? That's what we've tried to do in the
pamphlet, "Quest for Joy."

The Aim of These Messages

My aim in this series of messages is to unfold for us the six biblical truths in the pamphlet, explain why we regard these six as
so important, and along the way show how they function in making the
Christian gospel plain in our day. My prayer is that God would use
the messages to make you very strong in your grasp of the nature of
God and the nature of sin and the work of Christ and the meaning of
saving faith. God—sin—Christ—faith! That's what has to be
explained to people.

What is God like? What's the meaning and consequence of sin?
What did Christ achieve when he died? And what is faith? How you
answer those questions makes a tremendous difference in how you
share your faith—that IS your faith. Hundreds of people have
come to see these questions in fresh and exciting ways at
Bethlehem, and I hope that what makes God exciting to so many of us
at Bethlehem will come through in this pamphlet and will come
through in your life as you grow in the knowledge and grace of the
Lord.

A Look at the Pamphlet "Quest for Joy"

Let's look at it together.

Our Common Ground with All People

The front panel is intended to establish very honestly a common
ground that exists, we believe, between us Christians and every
person we will ever meet ("Quest for Joy: Six Biblical Truths"). We
and they want to be happy. They may be seeking it in the fast lane
while we seek it in the narrow way, but I don't think there is any
serious doubt that everyone wants to be happy—or use whatever
word you like: joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, pleasure. Even those
who seem bent on ruining their lives are trying to minimize pain in
the things they do. We do have a common ground with everyone we
meet.

An Alluring Tension

On the first inside panel we ask a question to arrest attention
and to begin a bridge between God and their desire for joy. "Did
you know that God commands us to be happy?" The question is
annoying. For most people today, being happy does not fit well with
being commanded to do anything. And yet the question is alluring
because most people have never heard anyone say this about God
before.

There is no escaping the tension this creates: God is an
authority—and people don't like authority. But God uses his
authority to command us to be happy—and people do like
happiness. There's the tension. Only the Holy Spirit can overcome
it and make people willing to find their happiness from a God who
has absolute authority over their lives. That's our goal.

The biblical evidence for God's authoritative command to be
happy is Psalm 37:4 (at the bottom of the panel): "Delight yourself
in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." And
of course there are dozens of other places in the Bible where we
are commanded to rejoice in the Lord or to be glad or to sing for
joy or be content.

The Heart of the Gospel

Then at the top of the facing panel come three sentences that I
would die for. They are not mere rhetoric. They are not mere verbal
flourishes. They are the heart of biblical gospel. They are the
release of the tension created between God's awesome authority and
my desire for happiness. These three sentences are a summary of the
whole book, Desiring God. These are the sentences that
have to be explained in sharing the gospel.

The best news in the world is that there is no necessary
conflict between our happiness and God's holiness. Trusting God for
everything brings him honor and us happiness. God's purpose to be
glorified and our longing to be satisfied succeed together.

We signal from the very outset that the Christian message is not
merely about my happiness but also about God's holiness. It is not
merely about my happiness but about God's honor. It's not merely
about my passion to be satisfied but about God's aim to be
glorified.

These three sentences signal loud and clear that you can't make
the gospel plain if people don't know about the holiness and the
honor and the glory of God. But these sentences also signal loud
and clear that there is a way—there is a way!—for God
to be God, great and glorious and holy and honorable, and for me to
be happy. Man's happiness is not emphasized at the expense of God's
greatness. And God's greatness is not emphasized at the expense of
man's happiness. There is a way—there is a way!—for God
to be glorified and for me to be satisfied together forever.

The Way to Full and Endless Joy

As Psalm 16:11 says (at the bottom of the panel), "You [God]
have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy
in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." This
is what people are after: fullness of joy and endless pleasure.
Full and endless. Full and endless.

The gospel we have to share is that there is a way to know this
joy, but only if we are willing and eager for God to be
God—for God to be glorified above all things.

And that takes us to the six truths inside which give the biblical basis for God's being glorified and our being satisfied
together.

Truth #1: God Created Us for His Glory

Now why do we begin here?

1. "Falling Short of God's Glory"

Virtually all presentations of the gospel eventually quote
Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
But hardly any gospel presentations have laid the groundwork for
understanding
what the falling short of God's glory means. If you
begin with God's commitment to his glory, you don't have that
problem.

2. Restoring the Centrality of God's Glory

God's glory—his greatness, his excellence, his power
and beauty and wisdom and goodness and worth and perfection (you
would take the time to open up this word glory!)—God's glory
is central in biblical revelation. Paul could often assume that
fact among the Jews when he preached the gospel, since they knew
the Old Testament. We can't assume this today at all.

That's why the gospel sermons in the book of Acts won't look
just like this tract. But compare what Paul stressed in his sermon
to the Greeks in Acts 17. He stresses the glorious, sovereign
freedom of God before he ever gets to the work of Christ (see verse
25: "He is not served by human hands as though he needed anything,
since he himself gives to all men life and breath and
everything").

We have to restore the centrality of God in the universe before
the work of Christ can be understood. We can't just appeal to the
self-centeredness of people, and expect to keep the gospel
pure.

3. Discovering Why We Exist

The third reason for beginning with the statement that God
created us for his glory is that it can make sense to people that
discovering why they exist is a good means of finding fulfillment
and happiness. If people believe there is a Creator God (or will
grant it for the sake of argument), they will perhaps see that we're
on a dead end street if our purposes in life are different than the
purposes of the one who made us and rules the world.

Suppose you walk into a house of a person who just came to
America from a very primitive part of the world, and notice he has
a pan in the fireplace and is grumbling. He says, "It doesn't
work." And you say, "What doesn't work?" "The water catcher. It
doesn't work. There's a hole right up through the roof and open to
let the rain in but it doesn't work." You would say to that person,
"That's not a water catcher. It's a fireplace. You burn wood in
there and the hole is for smoke to get out of the house. It's made
to keep you warm not collect water."

Everyone can see that when you know what something is for you
get more out of it. So it is with life. If we know what we were
made for, there is far greater hope of getting all out of life
possible.

Those are the reasons for beginning with Truth #1: GOD CREATED
US FOR HIS GLORY. And so we add the brief word of
interpretation:

Deep and lasting joy comes from being what we were created to
be. And we were created to be mirrors of God's glory—to fill
the earth with the light of his beauty by reflecting it to
others.

A Personal Word of Application

I'm going to pick it up here in two weeks because there is so
much more to say about this foundational truth. But let me close
with a personal word of application. In Isaiah 43:7 God says that
he created men and women for his glory. That includes you. He made
you—he conceived your personality, he knit you together in
your mother's womb—for his glory. Your life is not an
accident. It is not the meaningless consequence of random
evolutionary mutations.

God created you. And he did so with a high and noble purpose in
mind—that your utterly unique personality, and even your body
(1 Corinthians 6:20), might reflect some feature of God's glory that no
other person can. You are like a crystal, shaped like no other
crystal. And the reason you exist is to walk in the light of God's
glory in such a way that its rays and colors will reflect off of
you and cause others to admire God.

What we will see more fully in the weeks to come is that
walking in the light of God's glory means trusting in the greatness
of God's grace. And nothing is more satisfying than a confident
repose in the omnipotent grace of God. Therefore God's purpose to
be glorified and your longing to be satisfied succeed together.
Trusting God for everything brings him honor and brings you
happiness. It is a glorious gospel of a glorious God.

I urge you, put your whole trust in him!—for his glory and
for your joy. And let that joy begin to spill over and enlarge
itself in bringing others to the light.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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